Caste versus Class: Social Mobility in India, 1860- 2012

Using surname distributions, we compare long run social mobility rates for elite and underclass groups in India 1860-2012, with those of other societies such as Sweden and the USA. It is not clear whether recent social mobility rates in India should be higher or lower than in the West. The caste system notoriously embedded privilege in elite castes. But since Independence a quota of places in higher education, and in government jobs, have been reserved for the former lower castes. These quotas are now as great as 50% of such positions. Social mobility rates in India, however, prove to be extremely low, and not any higher now than under the Raj. Despite extensive social engineering India seems to be an unusually immobile society. We hypothesize that this immobility stems from continued strong marital endogamy in India.